Dare I Say…A New Hope?

Welcome Friend! If you’ve gotten this far I venture to say you too are an avid fan of fantasy and science fiction. This blog is my attempt to explore this reality and what it means to be human. I feel strongly one of the best ways to accomplish this is through reading, writing and discussing fiction. I particularly find genres which allow the writer to bend the rules and create elements impossible in this world work best for my purposes. Who can resist the allure of delving deep into stories like Star Wars or The Silmarillion to ruminate on life? College professors find this material ripe for the picking when developing coursework for philosophy classes. How easily these tales bring to the forefront heavy, tantalizing questions attracts people who find themselves thinking beyond more mundane aspects of life. Fantasy and science fiction literature almost begs its readers to consider the tough issues. What does it mean to be sentient, alive or human? Why is there evil in the world? Why are we here in this unique universe? Who or what created us? How was everything formed? Are there other times, dimensions and worlds? This is just the tip of the existential thought iceberg. I propose humanity weaves tales instinctually as an attempt to try to understand itself and the world around.

I was six years old when Star Wars overtook the world in 1977. I’ll never forget first seeing the trailer for the movie. It was a hot, humid summer day in Ohio. I should have been out playing with the kids in my neighborhood. Instead I found myself in a waiting room at the local hospital. Sitting next to my mother, I was nervously awaiting impending doom. I was cursed with the common childhood blight of short eustachian tubes. This defect in my inner ears caused me countless, painful ear infections. My parents had agreed that I should undergo a minor procedure under anesthesia to alleviate symptoms. I was unhappy to say the least. I stood crying as my mother checked us in. The receptionist gave me a small little Pillsbury Doughboy figure to comfort me. Perhaps you remember him? He was the weird, white humanoid figure with a baker’s hat. On television commercials he giggled when someone poked his belly. He was a mascot for Pillsbury. They were plugging Pillsbury…flour… cake mix… croissants? Geez, I really don’t know what they were trying to sell! Funny how the memory works. Some things stick and others flee. I remember liking the smell of the plastic used in manufacturing the doll. Alas, the toy didn’t distract me. It did not stop my whining. Nothing could shake my fixation on the knowledge the dreaded ear doctor had signed the order for implanting tiny tubes in my ears to allow for better drainage. The ear doctor was a figure looming large in my life. He was more sinister than Darth Vader or Grand Moff Tarkin. To this day, having my ears poked and prodded at the ENT physician’s office is in my mind akin to what Princess Leia had to endure at the hands of the Imperial interrogators. Little floating robot with a huge hypodermic needle….bring it on….just don’t touch my ears! As I fussed and squirmed hoping against hope I would escape this operation my mom tried another way to distract me. She pointed out what was on the television. I looked up at this small, black and white tv with grainy resolution typical of the 1970s. No HDTV in those days! Adding insult to injury, the tv was suspending from the ceiling of the waiting room too! But lo! Lightening struck and the heavens moved! Flashing across the screen, etched forever in my memory was my first glimpse of the interior of the Millennium Falcon! It was just a promo clip being played on a local news program spotlighting the new film. The scene they showed was the iconic escape from the Death Star. I was hooked. The music, the action, the sense of heroism was scintillating. Harrison Ford was simply dashing as he sat in the gunner’s chair blasting away at pursuing tie fighters with radiant streaks of red laser. I like to think the brief encounter with the film gave me courage to face what I had to do. I survived the operation and a popsicle later I was back outside in the heat playing with my friends. I saw Star Wars later that month and every chance afterwards that I got. Back then you had to wait for it to be re-released. I am confident I watched it in the theaters and drive-ins at least 7-8 times that summer.

Now, my father taught at a local community college in those days. He was an engineer. His field was in packaging engineering to be exact. Sounds exciting doesn’t it!? He was an expert on designing boxes and ‘whatnot’ needed to protect items while being shipped and stored. I know it isn’t as exciting as aerospace engineering, but his job was soon to be an unbeknownst boon to me! He came home one day with toys… Star Wars toys! Not just one x-wing, but three! I was also laden with scores of actions figures and a land speeder too. To my little mind this was heaven on earth. Apparently, his department was doing a project with the toy manufacturer Kenner handling all Star Wars toys. Once the packages were used for educational purposes they were up for grabs! Dear ol’ dad was kind enough to bring them home to me. I was the only kid on the block to have three x-wings! I played Star Wars every day for years! Of course I collected more toys, ever expanding my ability to create my own storyline. You see, I didn’t reenact the movies. I wanted the chance to escape into that world and learn more about it. This involved inventing my own plots. Gosh, I must of witnessed the Rebels and the Empire clash thousands of times! This was the start of authoring my own stories, although I wouldn’t start to write them down until I was in middle school.

It still startles me to think how readily I took to Star Wars. Yes, just about every kid had seen the movie and most had the toys. But, I began to realize as I got older, I was different from a lot of my peers. I know now that Star Wars had tapped into something I yearned for at even that age. I dreamed of a more fantastical world populated with heroes, villains and the timeless battles between good and evil. I longed to do something of consequence… to save the day. That feeling has grown and evolved with me throughout my life. I went on to devour book upon book from many of the more well-known (and lesser known) science fiction and fantasy writers. I wrote my own stories in high school and even won a short story contest for a piece I entered for the school magazine. It is important to also tell you growing up I was raised in a comfortably lax Catholic home. I learned about God, Jesus and all the usual biblical stories. I understood what it meant to be good and how to avoid sin and evil. But, all that felt far off and disconnected. I liked the message…just not the story telling. I guess the first time I connected fantasy and science fiction with spirituality was when I was in college. I recall a friend expressing their wish they had more of a religious background. Asking why, I learned they had found it difficult time after time to truly grasp the religious undertones authors often explored in their literary works. I didn’t think much of her observation at the time. However having entered into adulthood with all its complexities, I drifted back to explore my own religious upbringing. This inevitably lead me to investigate other types of spirituality. I began to recognize religious and spiritual concepts within most if not all of the fiction I read. Throughout the make-believe stories were the same values, truths and lessons I learned in the real world.

Now middle-aged, I still proudly claim the title of sci-fi/fantasy geek, but I also consider myself a mystic. Before you accuse me of delusions of grandeur, I am not claiming to be a guru, theologian or shaman. The only wisdom I possess is a few scraps picked up from reading, going to church off and on throughout my life and of course from my own experiences. I would hesitate to guide anyone on any type of spiritual path. I claim to be a mystic in the sense that I am ever seeking to learn more of the spiritual side of life. Amusingly, I have for quite some time found myself having an epiphany right smack in the middle of watching a show like Battlestar Galactica, Sabrina or Supernatural. I am now more cognizant of the evolution of delightfully rich characters that defy the easy label of good or evil. Think of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant, White Gold Wielder! Experiencing stories like these begs the question… can evil ultimately be made to serve the purpose of good? When we yearn for the villain to change sides, act good and aid the hero against an even greater threat we are likely to reflect on the true nature of judgement, sin and redemption. If we really dig deep… is it ok to mercilessly slaughter orcs or storm troopers? Do they have family and loved ones at home waiting? Did they sign up for their jobs? What informs their choices? Were they feed a line of convincing propaganda? I suspect the ‘masters of storytelling’ provide us plenty of clues to answer these questions. Ultimately as a new author, I dare to walk in their footsteps. My hope is my writing may, as others’ stories have for me, be a clarion call to awake from the material dream. So, with this first post on my blog, I invite you to join me as I explore life and all its messiness. Our guides will be the characters of fiction who allow us to safely experience without harm. In the end I suspect we will learn much about what it means to be human.